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Dissident Anglicans step closer to Rome

Leesha McKenny RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS

THE path to Rome detours by the Gold Coast for those disaffected Australian Anglicans planning to take up Pope Benedict's offer to join the Catholic Church.

Up to 50 clergy and laity will gather for the first time nationally at St Stephen's College at Coomera for three days from Tuesday to discuss the Australian Anglican ordinariate - the local framework which will allow them to keep their married clergy, liturgy and church structures within Catholicism.

The prominent Sydney barrister John McCarthy, QC, has been briefed to advise the main dissident group of conservatives, the breakaway Traditional Anglican Communion, on constitutional and legal issues arising from the historic move.

''Certainly the exercise has never been done before, not since the Reformation,'' he said.

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The world Traditional Anglican Communion Primate, Adelaide-based Archbishop John Hepworth, was confident the group's assets, such as properties or trust funds, would not be forfeited once the ordinariate becomes official later this year. But he conceded in the case of assets owned by the mainstream Anglican communion it would be a question of ''goodwill''.

The national meeting comes after three married British bishops, similarly unhappy with the liberal direction of the Anglican Church - such as allowing women clergy - became the first to be ordained as Catholic priests within a British ordinariate, at Westminster Cathedral earlier this month.

The re-ordination of four Australian Traditional Anglican Communion bishops, a retired Anglican bishop, a Japanese bishop and 24 Anglican priests is expected to be finalised by June 12.

The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Dr Phillip Aspinall, said the Australian ordinariate would have little bearing on the mainstream church as ''most of those wishing to leave the Anglican Church [have] already done so''.

But Archbishop Hepworth, who first visited the Vatican 21 years ago seeking to bring a Reformation church back into communion with the Holy See, said it felt ''strange but good'' that the long-sought-after arrangement was coming to pass.

Father Warren Wade from the parish of St Mary the Virgin, Sydney's only Traditional Anglican Communion parish, which operates out of a rented church space in North Turramurra, said his paperwork for re-ordination was in.

''I think this is a tremendous thing and the Holy Father has been very generous in having an understanding of where we come from, to the point where we can keep so much of the tradition that we've gained over the last 500 years,'' he said.

''All my parishioners - all 15 of them who come to Mass every Sunday - they're all for it.''